


For Seven Days

by kmm530



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Cousins, Depression, Fever, Grief, Hilda & Zelda are good aunts, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I promise, SPOILERS FOR S4 READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, Spoilers for Season 4, minor Hilda Spellman/Dr Cee, minor sickfic, nothing graphic, referenced character death, serious angst, seriously. major spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28500492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmm530/pseuds/kmm530
Summary: For seven days after the funeral, Ambrose couldn’t bring himself to leave his room.
Relationships: Ambrose Spellman & Hilda Spellman & Zelda Spellman, Ambrose Spellman & Sabrina Spellman, Dr. Cerberus/Hilda Spellman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	For Seven Days

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not kidding. Major spoilers.   
> Turn back now if you haven’t seen it.   
> Also. I made myself cry writing this.   
> You’ve been warned.

For seven days after the funeral, Ambrose couldn't bring himself to leave his room. Logically, he knew that all he would have to do was stand and put one foot in front of the other. But the ability to even conjure the thought of standing up had escaped him, and he was left weak in his bed. Logically, he knew that he was dehydrated from crying, weak from not eating, and tired from not sleeping. He couldn't bring himself to close his eyes, because every time he did, he saw Sabrina prepping her own body for burial, he saw Sabrina weak and dirty from Blackwood's manipulation, he saw Sabrina dead, Sabrina dead long before she had died, and then he would see her gravestones, and he refused to see any more. He buried his face in his pillow, screaming and sobbing his throat raw with grief.

  
Ambrose was nothing if not a man of logic. He liked things to make sense. He liked to have research to back up his points, he liked to have things laid out for him, facts, reasons why things were the way they were. But his cousin... there was nothing logical about the way she’d died. It made sense that to save others she’d give herself up, but he didn’t want it to. He wanted her back, consequences be sent to Heaven. Logic failed him as he cried and screamed for his cousin that first day.

On the second day, his Aunt Hilda approached his room and peeked in, inviting him to see the statue they'd put up in honour of Sabrina at the Academy (Heavens, even her name was too much right now). He murmured, declining, and rolled away from the light spilling in through the open door, the same light he'd been hiding from for days. He listened as she accepted his refusal and walked away. He rolled back towards the door, willing, begging, wishing, for Sabrina to come back, to walk through that door and tell him that everything was okay. Hours passed, and then footsteps approached his door. He sat up, eyes bloodshot but bright as he dared to hope, the word 'Cousin' on his tongue. When Hilda walked through the door, the tears that had been building up cascaded down his cheeks and he shook with silent sobs. Hilda, with tears of her own, found herself sitting next to him, holding him close while she whispered soft nothings to try to ease both their grief-laden hearts.

On the third day, he felt a pain behind his eyes and a turbulence in his stomach. Too weak to call for help, he curled into the dark, allowing it to try to soothe him. Still, he did not sleep. When Zelda came down to check on him, she saw Ambrose curled in a ball, whimpering in awful discomfort as his temperature rose every hour. Hilda was there within a minute when she heard Zelda's cry for her. For the remainder of the third day, Ambrose slipped in and out of fevered dreams and fevered consciousness. Any touch to his forehead, arms, or chest was like being prodded with a hot iron pick. He cried for the pain to cease. He cried for Zelda. He cried for Hilda. He cried for Prudence. He begged for forgiveness. When the heat was unbearable, he would see his cousin lying on her deathbed, bleeding out and cold as ice. He cried for her, begging her to come back. He cried for Sabrina until the moment his fever finally broke and he settled into a deep sleep. The ache his cries placed in his aunt's hearts was almost too painful for them to bear.

On the fourth day, he was always with someone. His aunts refused to leave him to his own devices and when they couldn't be in the room, Dr. Cee sat with him. Ambrose spent the day drifting between sleep and eating the hot, clear broth Hilda had made for him. His hands shook and some broth ended up on the blankets that covered him but most of it found its way to his mouth. He felt infinitely better having eaten for the first time in four days but there was still refusal from all three adults in the house when Ambrose tried to leave his bed. For being all of one hundred and thirty-four, he felt like a child.

A child.

Sabrina had been seventeen, still just a child. That was hardly a fraction of his own life thus far, not even a quarter. Logically, he should not be feeling even a quarter of the grief that he was. He should have closed his heart to her, should not have allowed her to get close. Should have protected himself. But she had wormed her way in, the little devil, with all her charm and contagious laughter and intelligent eyes and curious mind. When she had been born, he had loved her immediately, immensely. Sabrina had only been in his life for not even a quarter of it and yet she had been the brightest star in his galaxy. His cousin, with and for all her ideas and tricks, had been the very best and brightest of them all and death had taken her far too quickly, far too cruelly. She would never grow up now, stuck eternally in death at barely seventeen. Ambrose wept for her on the fifth day, making sense of his emotions.

On the sixth day, he was found in one of the furthest corners of his room. He'd found the energy to get out of his bed but had travelled too far and the grief had brought him to his knees. His aunts helped him back to his bed, and Ambrose wanted nothing more than to cry again. He knew that he wasn't the only one with grief, he knew they were struggling too, and yet they were pushing that aside to help him because he couldn't do the menial tasks of looking after himself that he'd learned as a child.

On the seventh day, Ambrose sat up in bed and ate the meal Hilda had left for him. He drank water. Then he laid back down, out of energy, and stared at his ceiling for a while. Then, slowly, deliberately, he closed his eyes. There was Sabrina, dying. He watched as she bled, bled to save those she’d cast to the Void and bled to save the world. For all her faults, Ambrose could never say she wasn’t brave. He was done watching her die, he decided. He was going to watch her be brave instead. His memories shifted into happier ones, ones where they teased each other, where he helped her with more complicated spells that they couldn’t tell the aunties about. Where he got to see her smile and could almost faintly hear her laugh. Exhaustion crept over him, but sleep did not come before his last memory did. Sabrina, telling him she loved him. He cried for his cousin, tears wetting his eyes and cheeks before he fell prey to the silence of sleep.

On the eighth day after the funeral (her funeral. Sabrina’s funeral), Ambrose gathered what strength he could find and used it to make his way up the numerous flights of stairs, arriving in the kitchen only to sink into a chair out of breath. His effort was met with a look from all three adults, Dr. Cee's eyes concerned and proud, Hilda's soft and kind, and Zelda's pleased and sad. The room was quiet - too quiet, silent of the chatter that his cousin had often brought with her, but as he looked at what remained of his family, he knew that someday, somehow, they would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I knew the series would end this way, but I’m still so emotional about it.   
> Also, Mambo Marie & Zelda were cheated of a good relationship and I will die on this hill.   
> XO


End file.
